Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wafer processing method for dividing a wafer into individual device chips, the wafer being composed of an SiC substrate and a plurality of devices formed on the front side of the SiC substrate.
Description of the Related Art
Various devices such as integrated circuits (ICs) and large-scale integrations (LSIs) are formed by forming a functional layer on the front side of a wafer formed from a silicon substrate and partitioning this functional layer into a plurality of regions along a plurality of crossing division lines. The back side of the wafer is ground by a grinding apparatus to thereby reduce the thickness of the wafer to a predetermined thickness. Thereafter, the division lines of the wafer are processed by a processing apparatus such as a cutting apparatus and a laser processing apparatus to thereby divide the wafer into a plurality of individual device chips corresponding to the respective devices. The device chips thus obtained are widely used in various electronic equipment such as mobile phones and personal computers.
Further, power devices or optical devices such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) are formed by forming a functional layer on the front side of a wafer formed from an SiC substrate and partitioning this functional layer into a plurality of regions along a plurality of crossing division lines. As similarly to the case of the silicon wafer mentioned above, the back side of the SiC wafer is ground by a grinding apparatus to thereby reduce the thickness of the SiC wafer to a predetermined thickness. Thereafter, the division lines of the SiC wafer are processed by a processing apparatus such as a cutting apparatus and a laser processing apparatus to thereby divide the SiC wafer into a plurality of individual device chips corresponding to the respective power devices or optical devices. The device chips thus obtained are widely used in various electronic equipment.